New help for newborns: Neonatal intensive care upgrading locally

Halifax Health has received approval from the state to proceed with upgrades to its neonatal intensive care unit, where babies born prematurely or with complications receive care.

SKYLER SWISHERSTAFF WRITER

DAYTONA BEACH — A baby is born so tiny that she fits in the palm of her mother's hand. Instead of staying at Halifax Health Medical Center, the premature infant is loaded into an ambulance or helicopter and taken to a hospital in Orlando or Jacksonville to receive more specialized care. The mother stays here in Volusia County, and family members must choose whether to travel to see the baby or comfort the nervous mother. It's a scene that happens too often, hospital officials say, but projects in the works at Halifax Health Medical Center and Florida Hospital Memorial Medical Center will allow more babies to receive care locally. Halifax Health has received approval from the state to proceed with upgrades to its neonatal intensive care unit, where babies born prematurely or with complications receive care, said Bonnie Wittman, director of the hospital's Center for Women and Infant Health. "Babies that are born that need help — the best thing we can do for that baby is to treat them right here," Wittman said. "We just felt like it's 2013, and it's time for us to step up." Once the project is completed, Halifax Health will have the only Level III NICU in Volusia and Flagler counties, which will allow it to care for frailer and sicker babies who in the past would have needed treatment outside the community. Meanwhile, Florida Hospital Memorial Medical Center is preparing to embark upon an $800,000 project to expand the hospital's fourth floor and open a 10-bed Level II NICU that will result in about 10 babies a month being able to receive care locally, said Becky Vernon, director of Women and Children's Services. That project will begin once the hospital clears 1,500 births a year, a milestone that must be met before the state will give approval, Vernon said. Florida Hospital Memorial delivered about 1,430 babies last year and already has equipment on par with what is found in a Level II NICU, she said. Halifax Health's NICU opened in 1975 and achieved Level II status three years later. The $150,000 project there will add five Level III beds to the nine-bed NICU, where babies typically stay about two weeks in warming beds and incubators that simulate the conditions in a mother's womb. Last year, 27 babies were transferred elsewhere. With the project, most of those babies will be able to stay at Halifax Health, Wittman said. Only infants needing surgical intervention — such as open heart surgery — will need to be transferred. It's important that families with a sick child be close to a support network, and the Halifax Health and Florida Hospital upgrades will allow that to happen, said Dixie Morgese, executive director of the Healthy Start Coalition of Flagler and Volusia Counties. "Their stress is compounded when they need to leave their local community just to be with their baby," Morgese said. "I don't think you can even measure what it means for families." The number of babies going to the NICU is on the rise, doubling over the past two years at Halifax Health, Wittman said. Several factors are contributing to this. More babies are being born addicted to prescription painkillers and need to be weaned off the drug in the NICU. Babies born with the condition — known as neonatal abstinence syndrome — suffer from excessive crying, poor feeding and irritability. Also, the increased usage of fertility treatments has led to more multiple births, which generally require stays in the neonatal unit. Other factors include a lack of access to prenatal care and unnecessary early elective deliveries in which physicians induce labor before 39 weeks of pregnancy. Halifax Health is launching a project with the March of Dimes to cut down on early deliveries, and Florida Hospital requires obstetricians provide written documentation of medical need for elective procedures earlier than 39 weeks. Helen Plakotos, 42, of Ormond Beach knows first-hand what it's like to go through a complicated birth. Her son Anthony was born preterm at 31 weeks and spent three weeks in the NICU at Halifax Health Medical Center. Plakotos couldn't imagine having her baby away from her during this uncertain time. "That would have been terrible," she said. Now, the child has just turned 4 and his height and weight is above average, a testament to the work down in the NICU.

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